[HN Gopher] Steven Levitt and John Donohue defend the abortion-c...
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Steven Levitt and John Donohue defend the abortion-crime hypothesis
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 54 points
Date : 2024-04-09 12:40 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I'm not adverse to the specific hypothesis, but not a fan of
| Freakonomics and the size of the effect they claim seems
| surprising.
|
| They appear to be claiming it accounts for all of the reduction
| in crime. This strikes me as somewhat implausible. Wouldn't
| better birth control be expected to show a similar impact, for
| similar reasons? (Though maybe the two correlate strongly in
| American politics?)
|
| edit: a paper looking into that based on differential timing on
| legal changes
|
| https://escholarship.org/content/qt8rw2m36w/qt8rw2m36w.pdf
| mynameishere wrote:
| People who consistently use birth control tend to be less
| impulsive and more future-oriented than people who have to
| resort to abortion (a last-resort form of birth control). ie,
| the type of people who aren't your typical criminals. That
| would be the thinking, I suppose. For my part, I think mass
| incarceration is probably the main reason for crime going down.
| techcode wrote:
| Pretty much every criminal says they've learned more
| crime/techniques and could build their "network" in prison.
| So more prisoners would likely have effect of
| continuing/promoting crime.
|
| Anyway - no birth control method (except abstaining) is 100%,
| even when you stack multiple different ways it can happen.
|
| And some methods of birth control - like pill for woman and
| vasectomy for guys - can mess you up long term.
|
| Women describe getting off the pill like completely changing
| their taste/smell senses, even brain/thinking ...etc (which
| sounds similar to what happens in/after pregnancy). When they
| give it to teenage girls (to "fix" their irregular cycle)
| they often gain weight..
|
| And while vasectomy could be reversed, it's not guaranteed it
| would work.
| ctrw wrote:
| That's why you don't let them go once they are in. Works
| quite well in El Salvador.
| ThomasBb wrote:
| There are alternative hypothesis for their finding; eg
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
| philodelta wrote:
| this is mentioned and addressed in the article.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Ideally, we would be able to tease out the effect of abortion,
| lead-paint, _AND_ the interaction (lead-paint x abortion). If
| an interaction model better explains the data, then we should
| be open to not rejecting it.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| They tried that--and found abortion was a far bigger factor
| than lead.
| mempko wrote:
| They didn't try that. They also didn't engage with other
| literature showing link with lead and crime at a micro
| level. In other words, they didn't seriously counter the
| lead hypothesis, which is stronger than their work.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Exposure to lead in the environment might, perhaps, be the
| next best hypothesis. But as we showed in our 2020 paper, when
| one controls for both environmental lead and abortion, the
| coefficient on abortion remains large while the coefficient on
| environmental lead is greatly reduced and loses statistical
| significance._
|
| From the article.
| mempko wrote:
| Their analysis about lead relies on a single study by Reyes.
| Far from robust. Additionally, if lead results in more
| violent people, then it's no wonder that reducing the births
| of people in lead polluted environments would have an effect
| on crime. What they would need to do to tease our lead, would
| be to find places with no to little lead pollution and show
| that abortions resulted in lower crime, which they do not
| seem to do.
|
| Studies by Mielke and Zahran (2012), and Feigenbaum and
| Muller (2016) provide further evidence that lead is the main
| culprit in crime reduction.
|
| Lead seems to be the reason, not abortion rates. Levitt and
| Donohue don't engage seriously with the Lead hypothesis as
| there are many compelling studies supporting Lead. They only
| engage with the weakest research. I'm not impressed. I worry
| that Levitt and Donohue are just adding wood to racist fires
| and their work will be used by bigots, fascists, and racists
| around the world. It's irresponsible work.
| nickff wrote:
| Why do you think their work is irresponsible? Is it still
| irresponsible if they're right? Should people only engage
| in anti-racist inquiry, or do you think they should just
| self-censor if they get the 'wrong' result?
|
| I don't find Levitt and Donohue very persuasive, but Levitt
| does seem very data-driven.
| tedivm wrote:
| He answers your question in the same paragraph that he
| states they're irresponsible:
|
| > Lead seems to be the reason, not abortion rates. Levitt
| and Donohue don't engage seriously with the Lead
| hypothesis as there are many compelling studies
| supporting Lead. They only engage with the weakest
| research.
|
| The accusation is that they are ignoring research that
| might disprove their point, while at the same time are
| using weak research that they can easily refute to try to
| downplay the stronger arguments they refuse to engage
| with. Now I personally haven't read the paper, so I do
| not know if this is true, but it does answer the question
| you asked as to what OP thinks is irresponsible.
| jlawson wrote:
| This doesn't answer the question.
|
| OP's accusation is that they Levitt and Donohue are
| irresponsible because the ideas they're investigating
| could be "used" by "fascists" and "racists".
|
| Parent is questioning the idea that scientific inquiry
| should be restricted because it might reveal facts or
| open ideas that harm a preferred political program.
|
| You are not answering that question. You're just talking
| about the quality of research, which isn't really the
| point here. It's whether the research should be
| done/allowed at all if it could harm a particular
| political ideology.
| techcode wrote:
| Wasn't there also other stuff that could impact this - say
| changes (loosening) to requirements for getting a divorce?
| User23 wrote:
| Or the so-called crack wars[1], whose effect on criminal
| violence is so huge that whatever the effect size of lead or
| abortions was, it's absolutely dwarfed to the point where it
| isn't practically analyzable. Between 1984 and
| 1989, the homicide rate for Black males aged 14 to 17 more than
| doubled, and the homicide rate for Black males aged 18 to 24
| increased nearly as much. During this period, the Black
| community also experienced a 20-100% increase in fetal death
| rates, low birth-weight babies, weapons arrests, and the number
| of children in foster care.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic_in_the_United...
| golergka wrote:
| You're listing crack wars and abortion as completely
| independent issues, whereas abortion could have direct effect
| on the former.
| User23 wrote:
| The problem is the claim that the crack wars would have
| been even worse without aborting future crack warriors is
| impossible to size.
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://archive.ph/2024.04.09-021350/https://www.economist.c...
| wang_li wrote:
| They will be unpopular with this when someone breaks down the
| demographics of abortion.
| jl2718 wrote:
| This is an uncomfortable and divisive topic, and as such, shrouds
| rationality. For instance, if you believe that the subject of
| this matter is morally wrong, then you should rationally also be
| able to fully accept evidence that your particular beliefs lead
| to a negative outcome. If you are both arguing about the outcome
| of your beliefs, and unwilling to change them with evidence, then
| you're either holding a rationally delusional belief, or engaging
| in deception to trick rational thinkers into adopting your
| morals. Let's just be honest about why you are arguing for or
| against an analytical result.
|
| I'm not saying that their study conclusions are correct; I'm just
| saying that acceptance or rejection of the claim should not be
| related to moral beliefs. It is, in my understanding of most
| religions, a pillar of faith to accept negative outcomes in
| adherence to scripture. It is easier, I think, to accept the
| self-flagellation form of this edict, than to accept burden onto
| others, and in this case, a wide social effect that seems
| incongruent with the aspirations of the faith itself. If they are
| right, are you wrong? That's your burden.
|
| I want to be clear that I am not taking a universal stance on the
| topic nor the analysis, nor religion. My personal experiences
| related to these topics are moderately severe, and it would
| probably not be productive to bring that here.
| jbm wrote:
| It seems disingenuous to start off a comment admitting that
| something is a complex subject and then doing a long-winded
| vaguebook-style one-sided criticism; it's not convincing at
| all.
|
| Crime will be going up regardless of any statistical effect
| abortion had because of the far greater impacts of climate
| change and the ensuing impoverishment of the population.
| af3d wrote:
| Wait, did I read that right? Are you actually suggesting that
| _climate change_ is the cause of rising crime rates? If so,
| please explain, because I would honestly like to know how you
| reached that conclusion.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| There you go:
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6b37
|
| "The temperature-aggression hypothesis posits that
| individuals experiencing physiological heat stress are more
| likely to read personal interactions as aggressive than
| individuals not experiencing heat stress with subtle shifts
| toward more violent responses, accordingly."
| golergka wrote:
| > you should rationally also be able to fully accept evidence
| that your particular beliefs lead to a negative outcome. If you
| are both arguing about the outcome of your beliefs, and
| unwilling to change them with evidence, then you're either
| holding a rationally delusional belief, or engaging in
| deception to trick rational thinkers into adopting your morals.
|
| That's a very utilitarian point of view, and most people are
| demonstrably not utilitarian. The point of moral beliefs is not
| necessarily to lead to better overall outcomes on average for
| everybody.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Well, if you accept as a given (for the sake of argument) that
| permitting rampant abortion tangibly reduces crime, then there
| are different conclusions that you can draw.
|
| For example, if you believe that very few people are "born bad"
| (which I don't believe is a challenging assertion...
| Psychopathy exists and all that, but even that can be steered
| into productive ends), then incarcerations are a failure of the
| system to steer those with troubled or unwanted beginnings into
| productive lives regardless.
|
| The anti-abortion people, instead of fighting abortion, should
| be pushing for better support of young people who grew up in
| troubled or unwanted environments. Then and only then, once
| that is in place, can the restriction of abortion commence IMHO
| without resulting in more societal harm.
|
| Unfortunately, the same people pushing to ban abortion are the
| people who would stand in the way of social supports like this,
| trying to have their cake and eat it too, because it costs
| money. Or perhaps because they, uncharacteristically
| unempathetically and dehumanizingly, see people as falling into
| only 2 camps, "hardworking Americans" and "criminals"
|
| Lastly, both incarceration and child rehabilitation should be
| judged based on recidivism, and new ideas should be attempted
| if that number is inadequate, and at least in the US, they're
| not.
| bachmeier wrote:
| For a review from 2009 that I think does a good job of
| summarizing the views of economists (though it's not my research
| area): https://www.nber.org/papers/w15098
|
| "Such models provide little support for the Donohue and Levitt
| hypothesis in either the US or the United Kingdom."
|
| Related: Levitt did a podcast recently that got a lot of
| attention, where he looks back on his career and discusses his
| retirement at age 58, and discusses this topic:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steven-d-levitt-freako...
| louwrentius wrote:
| If Books Could Kill: Freakonomics is a biased but stil enjoyable
| podcast episode that touches this topic as part of the whole book
| History is full of instances where new scientific theories were
| resisted by those who found them inconvenient. By and large,
| history hasn't been kind to the resisters.
|
| Quite tone-deaf, makes me mistrust their results even more
| (although I'm in support of abortion) it almost reads as a threat
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > Consistent with our theory, looking at arrest data, which
| reveal the age of the offender, the declines in crime were
| concentrated among those born after abortion became legal.
|
| This seems to be confusing correlation with causation.
|
| Aren't there many other possible causes to explain the decrease
| in crime?
|
| For example, couldn't the decrease in crime (overall) be
| attributable to the fact that, due to better technology and
| policing methods, more criminals get caught, deterring future
| would-be criminals as well as removing their support and
| educational network and means of organization?
|
| That, and RICO, which has certainly decimated Cosa Nostra in the
| U.S., to the point that current and former members admit that the
| Italian/Sicilian Mafia will likely cease to exist as a
| significant organization in the near future.
|
| As well, the web arose during the 90's and caused profound
| societal changes, and the percentage of people carrying cash or
| available places holding cash has dropped every year since the
| 90's. Even bank robberies, which dominated crime in Los Angeles
| in the 80's, have largely disappeared.
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